Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): We welcome to the Committee Kate Clifford, Michelle Hill, Stephen Jones and Paul Roberts, who are all members of the Interim Regional Planning Commission (IPRC). Mark Hand, who is a member of the secretariat, is joining us remotely.

As per usual, members, I am seeking agreement that the evidence be recorded by Hansard.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Thank you very much for joining us today. We have been eagerly awaiting your attendance at the Committee, and we are delighted to have you with us. Planning is a very important issue that stretches across so many elements of the Department for Infrastructure.

I invite you to make a brief opening statement of five minutes, and then we will go to members' questions. Members are keen to make the best use of time today with questions. Please talk to the Committee now for five minutes.

Ms Kate Clifford (Interim Regional Planning Commission): Thank you very much. Everybody's name is in front of them, so you know who we are. Thank you for inviting us to be here today. I just want to be really clear and say that our reluctance to come before the Committee is because we have not reached any conclusions yet. That is the only reason why we have been reluctant. When the commission was first pulled together, there was no sitting Minister and no government in Northern Ireland. From about April onwards, we have been together as a commission and have had a clearer direction and sense of where we need to go and what we need to do. I just wanted to be really clear about that. Our reluctance was not about not wanting to come in front of the Committee; it was very much because we have not reached a conclusion yet. We are not yet at that point, so we still have a bit of work to do.

Thank you for inviting us to speak to you about the Interim Regional Planning Commission. The commission was established in 2023 following a key recommendation from the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) to enhance and improve the planning system in Northern Ireland. Our primary role has been to provide strategic advice and support to the planning system, with a focus on guiding continuous planning improvement and promoting transparency and accountability. It was always envisaged that the commission would be a small representative group of experts and advisers that was designed to reflect key stakeholder interests.

We are made up of 10 voluntary representatives, and, until December, we were independently chaired by Rosemary Thomas, who was the former chief planner in Wales. At present, the members of the commission include representatives from the Confederation of British Industry (CBI); the Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce and Industry; Community Places; the Rural Community Network; and Northern Ireland Environment Link's membership and climate team. It also includes a chief executive from local government and the permanent secretary of the Department for Infrastructure. The Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) performs the role of secretariat to the commission.

Our initial meetings, which were held in 2023, focused on developing our aims and objectives and exploring what we could commit to delivering within the terms of reference and without a Minister in office. We had some valuable discussions, including on exploring perceived gaps and opportunities in the planning improvement programme (PIP), a lack of focus on the major and regionally significant consenting processes and the use of planning conditions in the development management process. We also talked about addressing a cultural change in the planning system.

Following the formation of the Northern Ireland Executive, in April 2024 the commission met the then Minister for Infrastructure, Minister O'Dowd, to discuss the aims, objectives and outcomes of the commission's work. Minister O'Dowd asked us to draw up a work programme that concentrated on providing solution-focused advice to support the planning improvement programme. That work programme was drawn up and has been the commission's primary focus to date.

We have held six sessions, which focused on thematic areas that are critical to improving the planning system. Those sessions have delved into best practices from other jurisdictions throughout the UK — Scotland, England and Wales — as well as from the Republic of Ireland. Those sessions explored potential improvements and efficiency outcomes, governance systems and a review of local authorities, and they took stock of the local development plan (LDP) process. Timelines to highlight key areas of delay and identify any learning from and possible improvements to the process to date were also considered.

In order to shape our recommendations, we have engaged with a broad range of key stakeholders, including the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives (SOLACE); the Planning Appeals Commission (PAC); the Northern Ireland Housing Executive (NIHE); a housing association; the Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce; and the Rural Community Network. Our final session is due to take place in May 2025, and that will focus on bringing together all the learning and on developing our recommendations for planning improvement. That will form the basis of a report that we aim to deliver to the Minister in May.

While the commission currently operates under the guiding principles that reflect its interim status as an advisory body, we believe that our insights and recommendations will be valuable to central and local government. By focusing on solutions that are forward-looking yet grounded in the realities of our planning system, the commission hopes that, through its work, the final report to the Minister can provide practical advice that can contribute to the foundations of long-term planning improvement, underpinning positive changes and delivering excellence across the system.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): OK, thank you very much. We appreciate that.

I just want to check that Mark Hand can hear us. Yes? That is perfect.

We appreciate your coming to the Committee today. It was not that we felt that there was an unwillingness to come. We recognise that you have not fully reported yet. However, planning is important to the Committee as well as to investors and to Northern Ireland. We recognise that there is a bit of a problem in Northern Ireland. That is no exaggeration; we are probably underestimating the scale of the problem in planning in Northern Ireland. That is why we wanted to hear from you before the report comes out. We wanted to take stock and find out where you have reached in your meetings and deliberations. That is the point of coming to the Committee today.

The questions will kick off with that. So far, what is your assessment of planning in Northern Ireland? What are the challenges right now that have you come across? Can they be resolved in the short to medium term?

Ms Clifford: One of the things that we are really clear about is the fact that we are working with a moving platform. Changes and improvements have already been made between the time that the audit report was published and now. The Department is working through a planning improvement programme, and there are a lot of moving parts in what district councils are doing and how local plans are moving forward. It is about taking stock of what we can contribute at this point.

The other conversation that we have had with a number of the other jurisdictions is about the fact that, unfortunately, nobody is getting it right. There are blockages and challenges in all the systems that we looked at across all the jurisdictions. That is just a caveat. Resolutions are happening in some areas that have been really enlightening for us, and it is now about working through what we have heard and saying, "What will work here, and what will work best here?". It is a moving platform, however. A lot of stuff has moved on since the audit report came about. I will just make that caveat before somebody else comes in.

Mr Paul Roberts (Interim Regional Planning Commission): Yes. The planning system is extremely opaque. It is hard for individuals or even organisations in communities to be involved in it. As Kate said, if we look at what happens in other jurisdictions, we see a lot of the same problems. Different solutions are being tried to address them. Scotland has a national planning improvement champion. It was really good to hear from him about what they are trying to do. From my perspective in Community Places, which works with and supports groups and individuals who cannot afford to access planning advice, there is an opaque system that has 11 councils. That means that there are 11 variations. The hope is that the recommendations will lead to planning operating more consistently so that it becomes more understandable. The commission has been a really useful forum for that, because it has brought together local government, DFI, CBI and the community and voluntary sector to talk about the potential issues and how to address them. It has also been really good to hear about others' experience and to find that the problem is not unique to Northern Ireland.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): You said that planning is an "opaque" system: that is a worrying statement in itself. Surely the planning system should be transparent and open to everybody.

You mentioned Scotland's national planning champion: would you advocate that role being in Northern Ireland? It would help with transparency by bringing the different approaches together.

Mr Roberts: We have not got on to recommendations at this stage. I am merely reporting what we have done. We will have our final meeting at which we will get all the partners around the table and agree recommendations. At this stage, we cannot come forward and say what those will be.

Ms Michelle Hill (Interim Regional Planning Commission): We are looking at that, because we saw and heard about the benefits of having a dedicated, albeit small, resource in Scotland. We heard about its achievements and the differences that it could make to the planning system over a relatively short period. It was really important to hear from Craig, who is the champion in Scotland, and to hear about the development of an improvement hub. There are certainly things to look at and seriously consider, Chair, because of the benefits that we heard about. As others have said, however, we are not yet at the stage of having firm recommendations and a way forward.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): I want to check the timelines of the commission's work. It was set up in 2023. You said that the Minister was not in place then, and you had initial meetings. When you met the Minister in April, he asked you to draw up a work programme. Why was there such a delay in drawing up a work programme? Considering that you were set up in 2023, why did it take a Minister to indicate that a work programme needed to be in place?

Ms Hill: It is not the case that a work programme was developed following our meeting with the Minister. I will take you back to how the group was set up. The group's membership has diverse experience in and knowledge of the planning system. It is not just planners who sit on the commission; its members come from different backgrounds. Initially, there were meetings to educate and build our capacity as a commission for those who were not as familiar with the planning system. There were reports from DFI and others to bring us up to speed and tell us what was happening with the planning improvement programme. There were already 40 actions from the combination of the reports that planning improvement was looking at. We were getting updates on those to advise us what was happening, because, obviously, an important role of the commission is not to duplicate the work that is already happening in the planning improvement programme.

In the early stages, we did not meet as frequently as we do now. In the past year, we have been meeting on a six-weekly basis, but, when the commission was first set up, the meetings were quarterly at best. Only a few meetings happened before that, and members of the commission were brought up to speed at those meetings. Before the Minister came into place, we had a workshop to look at what the focus and key themes of our work plan should be. It was an evolution of a commission: people were brought up to speed; there was a facilitated workshop for us as a commission, with the observers, to start to draw out key issues and themes; and then the Minister came into place. We knew that a work plan had to be developed, so it was perfect timing for it to happen at that time. The meetings have been happening fairly frequently — about every six weeks or so — since April. That is where the real momentum has been coming from.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): The terms of reference state that the IRPC would meet quarterly, but it has met every month since 14 August 2024. Is it fair to say that there is a bit of catch-up going on?

Ms Hill: I would not necessarily say that it is catch-up. There is a focus to the commission now, because we have gone through those phases. It was important to have those phases as a sound building block to build on and from which to move forward. We are where we are. We are drawing the process to a close and hope to have the report ready in May, which aligns with what the Minister has said.

Ms Clifford: There has been significant churn, even in our sector. The people who started out on the commission are not the people who are there now. The policy officer in my organisation was there initially, but now it is me. We are all there as volunteers. I am not dismissing that in any way, shape or form, but this is over and above our day jobs and the work that we do. There has been a significant pull on us over the past while to be at the meetings, to be well informed and to act in the role of commission, but we have had a lot of catch-up to do too.

Part of the insistence on having the regular meetings over the past while has been the fact that there is a point by which this needs to reach a conclusion, and there is work that needs to be done. It cannot go on for ever. That momentum has built from all of us through a desire to draw the process to a close and to make sure that we do a good job, are all on the same page and have as much information as possible to reach good recommendations.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Can you confirm how many members have changed since the commission began until now?

Ms Hill: We can provide you with a list of those changes. I have been on the commission since the beginning, and I remain on it. We have a list.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): We have that list. Is that the total? Are there no other members who have moved or changed since then?

Ms Hill: That looks as though it is an up-to-date list.

Mr K Buchanan: Is that the current list?

Ms Hill: Yes, that is the current list.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Has that had an impact? I note that there has been a significant churn. You talked about the fact that you had to bring people up to speed and that there was training. That will be frustrating for people in the industry to hear. Has that had an impact on your ability to report and provide recommendations so far?

Mr Roberts: I do not think so. Since the work plan was agreed, there has been a degree of consistency. As Kate said, we are making a big commitment. People have been attending the monthly meetings and giving strong input, because we see the importance of planning and the potential to have it as a positive tool. Again, it has been really good to hear about the work that has been going on in the planning improvement programme. We are getting direct reports of improvements and things that have changed. As we said, it is a bit of a moving platform, but, certainly, we expect to meet in May and to make recommendations.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): OK. Before I move on, what is your assessment of the Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce and Industry's 'Planning Improvement and Reform Position Paper'? Members will be aware of it. I wonder whether you have made any assessment of it as part of your deliberations.

Ms Hill: We got a presentation on that report, and we have copies of it. It will be put into the overall mix, Chair. We will look at it as part of our considerations.

Mr Dunne: Thanks, folks, for your presentation. I appreciate the good work that you are doing. Ultimately, we all share your desire to improve our planning process.

Paul, you mentioned the fact that there are 11 councils, which is a point that I have talked about a number of times in the Committee. Those councils often have 11 different ways of working, and they are all at 11 different stages on a number of issues, including the LDPs. Variation can have benefits at times, but it can have drawbacks as well. We see that through the league tables on processing times for applications. Are you concerned about that variation across a number of fronts? What engagement do you have with each of the 11 councils?

Mr Roberts: Council representatives attend the meetings. A lot of the discussion is about the potential of shared resources and how we can have a more consistent line. As you said, there are benefits to having individual solutions in each council, but it is about trying to share that learning. The end goal is to make things operate better.

Mr Dunne: With time, as the 11 councils have evolved since they went live in 2015, have they grown further apart? Is that your experience from engaging with them?

Mr Stephen Jones (Interim Regional Planning Commission): We are not necessarily getting into the detail of any specific LDP. The commission's terms of reference are fairly clear about taking a long-term strategic approach to that, so it is not about any specific LDP. I would not say that that features in our findings, to be honest.

Mr Roberts: The local authorities presented to us jointly. They are coming together to see what their issues in planning are and how they might improve the system as well.

Ms Clifford: One of the facts that were presented to us comes back to employment churn, retaining staff, institutional knowledge and the changeover in staff that has happened over time. I hate using the term "natural wastage", but people have retired and moved on or taken up jobs in other jurisdictions, and we see better-paid jobs in other areas. All that has had an impact. We have heard from our council representatives and others about the planning process and some of the difficulties that they have encountered with the changeover of personnel. That has been less of an issue in some areas than in others. Some areas have found it hard to attract new talent.

Mr Dunne: That is frustrating for people inside and outside the council. We hear that every week from stakeholders.

Ms Clifford: Absolutely, and we have to acknowledge that. It goes back to that point about it being a moving platform. Part of the process of succession planning is asking how to encourage new people in and how not to lose institutional knowledge when someone moves off. All sectors see that. I am in the community and voluntary sector, where we see that all the time.

On the point about local knowledge, one of the lovely things about community planning in a locality is that the people there understand the area. They understand its nuances, its people and its politics, which all feed into how successful planning can be. When you get new faces in, you find that there is a whole new learning curve for them. We have not drawn any conclusion on that, but that is what we have heard loudly from the people sitting around the table both from within and outside the Department.

Ms Hill: The problem is not unique to here either. We have heard from guest speakers that we have had from other jurisdictions about the movement and churn of personnel in planning creating an issue in those jurisdictions, as well as about making planning a profession that will attract young people who will rejuvenate it and bring in new blood . We have heard that that is common and not unique to us.

Mr Dunne: Another issue is consultee response times. Have you done much work on that? Some sectors would say that there is over-consultation. We have seen huge delays across a number of statutory consultees, which is frustrating. Are you looking at any action points that might improve that process?

Mr Jones: Work is under way on that through the planning improvement programme. We are yet to get a final briefing on the planning improvement programme before we have our last session, at which we will draw the recommendations together. That will serve multiple purposes, such as making sure that we are fully aligned with the work that is already being done and that we do not duplicate recommendations. We also hope to draw in some of the existing groups, such as the statutory consultee group that is already up and running, and to find out the specific outworkings of such groups.

Mr Dunne: My final question is on the Planning Appeals Commission. There has been a number of years of frustration because of the delays and backlogs in that body. Recently, there has been some talk about improvements to and investment in it. Are you aware of any further progress on that at this stage?

Mr Jones: We have heard from it. It believes that it will get up and running at full capacity by 2026-27. I believe that that is how that was framed. It is now fully resourced for the first time. There were discussions about how the LDPs added to it. I do not know the extent to which resourcing was considered when the LDPs for some of that came down the track. Some of those elements will probably form part of our discussions.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): I just saw that Mark Hand is indicating to come in. Apologies, Mark.

Mr Mark Hand (Interim Regional Planning Commission): That is OK; no problem at all. Thanks, Committee.

The Committee asked about local variations between the 11 councils, and a Committee member asked whether the commission is looking at that. I was just going to chip in to say that it is not really the commission's role to look at that but that the RTPI and DFI planning division are working with the councils to support best practice. They are doing a lot of that themselves.

A point was made about whether the variation has increased since 2015. It probably increased in the initial years, but it is perhaps coming back together in many ways. A huge strength of Northern Ireland is its size, which means that the 11 heads of planning can and do get together in a room to discuss best practice and how they can improve things and work together effectively. They also have regular meetings with the DFI representatives and us. Quite a lot of good work is going on. There is still scope for improvement, but that is an important point.

You asked about variation. It is about striking a balance between having a locally responsive and locally distinctive service that meets communities' needs and something that is just confusing. There are two different customers in that regard. In many instances, members of the public tend to engage with the planning system perhaps only once or twice in their life. They are therefore always coming to it afresh. Paul mentioned the challenge, which is that members of the public find the system opaque or confusing. That is a challenge for us to address in all the nations. The other main customers are the applicants themselves, many of whom will deal with the planning system more frequently and in more than one council area. It is therefore important that we focus on achieving consistency. We should then make it as clear as possible to communities how they should engage and how the system works. I hope that that is helpful to the Committee.

Mr Dunne: Thanks, folks.

Mr McReynolds: Thank you, everyone, for coming in today. My question was going to be about the membership of the interim commission, on which the Chair has already touched. As I was flicking through the papers, I noticed that there are no real industry voices on it. There is no one from the Construction Employers Federation (CEF) or from the renewables sector. Your membership has representatives from two community organisations, from two environmental organisations and from a third sector, which I cannot remember. At the same time, DFI acts as an observer. It feels to me as though it would be impossible to appease everybody around the table. Given that there are so many voices involved and that there is no major input from the industry sector, did the group find the initial conversations challenging?

Mr Jones: Do you want to speak about the initial conversations?

Ms Hill: It is important to have a cross section of voices involved. We were invited to participate. We played no part in setting up the interim commission. It has two representatives from the environmental sector and two from the community sector. The business sector is also represented. The rationale behind that was that it covered the three arms of development, so to speak. It is really important to have those three voices, along with the advisers' voices, in order to get a cross section of views and opinions.

As we have said already, we are very much in listening mode. We take everything in and listen. We have still to get to our recommendations, which we will then debate as a commission. We are all professional people around the table, so I am sure that it will all be perfectly amicable, but the debate on the recommendations has still to come. It has, however, been necessary to have that cross section of voices and ears.

Mr McReynolds: I agree with you 100%. I was not being critical.

Ms Hill: Right. [Laughter.]

Mr McReynolds: There are so many voices around the table. At this Committee, I have raised, multiple times, what is my fear, which is based on the fact that developers come to me and say, "Look, it is quite difficult to do business in Northern Ireland compared with doing business in Scotland, the Republic and England". When Labour came into government, it made planning an absolute priority. Northern Ireland feels like a difficult place. I do not want us to be forgotten about. I have therefore raised planning as an issue in Committee multiple times and said that it is a major concern for me.

In a way, it factors into what you were saying, Kate, about how you are all volunteers. I understand the role that volunteers play. It can be a thankless job a lot of the time. I say that as someone who relies on volunteers. Given the significance of what you are all dealing with and discussing, does that put a lot of added pressure on the commission?

Ms Clifford: Had I been asked to raise my hand in a public forum to be a part of the interim commission, I would have put it up straight away. Planning affects everything that we do. In my day job, I am the director of the Rural Community Network Northern Ireland. We have communities that are fighting to sit at the table to discuss the local development plans and community planning. We have communities that are trying to develop social housing, and others that are trying to get better infrastructure access so that they can better access services, which are becoming more and more centralised in Northern Ireland. If I had therefore been asked in a public forum to be part of the commission, I would have thrown my hand up and said, "We should be at that table having those conversations".

We were having a conversation outside earlier about addressing sectarianism in Northern Ireland. We have been very involved in the housing for all programme and are trying to find places to desegregate the communities in which we live. We were saying that, 25 years on from the Good Friday Agreement, we still have massively segregated areas in Northern Ireland. I am not speaking for the commission here but from the point of view of the work that I do, and one of the ways in which we will address segregation is through really good planning. We have the housing for all programme, and we have seen how, through really positive planning, we can change from being a segregated society. We can probably address some of that, but if we do not do it through planning, that will not happen. We need to have an inclusive process, and we can have that by taking a whole-system approach and not viewing planning as something that sits separately from all that we do. That is what community planning should do.

We have loads of community volunteers who, week in, week out, engage on local development plans and planning processes. It is about the future shape of their community, and they know what will be successful and what will not be successful in the future. It is therefore imperative that we have that broad range of people sitting at the table. If we do not have the dialogue, we will just end up, as we do brilliantly in Northern Ireland, with everybody working in silos, where the developer sits here, the community sits here and the statutory agencies sit here, without talking.

This has been a brilliant opportunity. It is really reassuring to sit at the table and hear that the churn that is happening in our sector and that the difficulty that we are experiencing with retention, bringing in new blood and succession planning is also happening in other sectors. It is not that that is a good thing, but it is still reassuring to know that it is happening not just to us but in a broader context. We also have to hear absolutely different perspectives from those that we normally hear in the echo chamber in which we can sometimes operate. Hearing about the frustrations and difficulties that others are facing has broadened our thinking and, indeed, broadened how I work. Having those debates and discussions has therefore been really enlightening.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): I do not mean to curtail conversation, but I ask that everyone keep questions and answers brief. We want to make the best use of our time.

Mr McReynolds: Thank you very much, Kate. I appreciate that.

Paul and Stephen mentioned the 11 councils. That is a bit of a hobby horse for me at the minute. I have just completed a consultation on tree preservation orders. I consulted multiple councils and their officers about how the planning system can better protect trees and improve our environment, and I noticed a complete disparity among all of them: culturally; in how they operate; and in how they interpret guidelines. I even heard some officials voice frustrations. How can you create more geographical uniformity across the 11 councils? I will pre-empt your saying that there should be a recommendation or whatever, but how can you try to address that issue, because it is a major barrier?

Mr Roberts: It is also very resource-intensive, because each council is trying to develop its own policies. That is a discussion that the councils have had with us as well. They talked about having better communication among councils, about sharing resources and about trying to do things better. We have not got to the stage of making recommendations, and we have not been looking at individual councils or anything like that, but I suppose that it is about the way in which they work. We have been talking to other jurisdictions about their ways of working, and they have come up with some suggestions for us, which we will hopefully feed into our recommendations.

Ms Hill: Greater leadership and communication across council areas and between councils and DFI is key to avoiding silo working. They need to look beyond the little area on which they focus.

Mr McReynolds: Lastly, how soon after the wrap-up on 7 May will we receive the report? Is it the feeling that it will echo a lot of what we have heard before, or will there be fresh things in it that the Minister will hopefully find palatable?

Mr Jones: To go back to your earlier question, I am optimistic about the tone of the conversation among all the partners. There is a broad willingness there, but it is key that targeted, clear, action-focused recommendations be made that will address, for example, the Public Accounts Committee's report. Our report should not just echo it or be more of an assessment of the problems. Rather, it should be based on the conversations being had in a variety of other regions. Some of the partners have made a concise number of suggestions that would go a long way to addressing multiple issues at the same time.

Mr McReynolds: Thank you.

Mr McMurray: We have covered a fair number of the issues so far. The councils are important. Opaqueness was mentioned, and that is an important issue. How do you envisage some of the learning trickling down through the councils? Mr Dunne referenced the different league tables. How do we use learning from elsewhere to improve the processing times for applications?

Ms Hill: I am not here to speak for the heads of planning, but there is a group on which the senior planners from all 11 councils get together to share best practice, solve problems and share ideas about what is working in one council area and what could work in another. I am not part of that group, but that should be happening. The group is an obvious starting place for getting to that level, Andrew, and for putting in place a framework to allow all of that to trickle down effectively to the planner who deals with individual applications and is the forward-facing part of the planning system.

Mr McMurray: Retaining staff is a key issue. Would doing that help retain staff?

Ms Hill: There is an issue with how planners are perceived externally. The RTPI is looking at how to get new planners into the system and keep them there. Mark may want to come in on that. Through our guest speakers, we learned that the problem is not unique to this country. Retention is also an issue in Scotland and England.

Mr McMurray: Does the interim commission have a view on meeting climate targets? How are such applications prioritised in the system? Have you looked at that?

Mr Jones: We have not looked specifically at climate targets. There has been a little bit done for housing, but that is more systemic. The Turley report that was mentioned earlier suggested novel approaches for the renewables sector, such as pilot schemes. Some of that will be in the mix during the discussions, but I cannot tell you anything more than that at the moment.

Mr McMurray: Does the interim commission have a view on the length of time that it sometimes takes to get back consultation responses? Indeed, some come in after the deadline, thus prolonging the process.

Mr Jones: Not yet, I am afraid.

Mr McMurray: Not yet.

Mr Jones: No, but I hope that that is something that we can do.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Mark Hand's hand is up.

Mr Hand: I will come back in on Michelle's point about resources. There is a significant issue with the recruitment and retention of planners throughout the nations, not just in Northern Ireland, and particularly in the public sector. We did some research into the public sector in England between 2010 and 2020, and the planning system lost a significant number of public-sector workers in that period.

We represent the public sector, the private sector and the third sector. There tends to be movement from public-sector planning into private-sector planning and, more recently, into the energy sector, partly as a result of salaries. An additional challenge for us in Northern Ireland is the salary disparity between here and the South. A fairly big recruitment campaign is just starting for about 50 extra local planners for councils in the Republic of Ireland, so it is an ongoing challenge for us. Undergraduates are given talks at universities in Northern Ireland to entice them into such jobs.

We are looking at a couple of solutions. The Scottish Government fund 50 bursaries to pay for people to go through university to qualify as planners. In England, about 800 government-funded apprenticeships are coming through the system. We are therefore looking at the different initiatives out there, and they may feature in our recommendations, but it is certainly a challenge to recruit and retain planners.

Mr K Buchanan: Thanks for coming along. You said at the start that nobody else is getting it right. You had sessions with England, Scotland and Wales and with the Republic of Ireland. If it were a league table, where would we sit? [Laughter.]

You have to be honest. [Laughter.]

Ms Clifford: That is a really unfair question.

Mr Roberts: Not at the bottom.

Ms Hill: There is no one perfect system. Each jurisdiction has its issues, so we cannot say that a silver bullet will solve all the planning problems across all 11 council areas in Northern Ireland. It is a far more complex situation than that. That is reflected in the fact that —.

Mr K Buchanan: I am going to push you. If you had to rate us alongside the other four, where would we sit?

Mr Jones: On what?

Mr K Buchanan: From one to five, with one being the best and five being the worst.

Mr Jones: Do you mean as planning systems overall?

Mr K Buchanan: Yes, broadly.

Mr Jones: I do not know —.

Mr Roberts: So much of it is about resources and about the commitment of those resources. As Kate said, we have a bit of a moving platform here. We have the planning improvement programme, which is delivering results. We are seeing differences. It would therefore be quite hard to assess where we sit. Scotland has probably focused most on planning, but it has also put the most resources into it.

Ms Clifford: I laughed because it also depends on from where one is coming. Coming from the community and voluntary sector and from looking at where planning sits, I know that many of the communities that we work with become engaged with planning only when it becomes a controversial issue for them, such as when they come up against a planning process. Others have found the planning process to have been an excellent and positive experience.

We know the ins and outs of our planning system. We know a lot about where it is going wrong, where it may be sitting below its capacity or capabilities and where its performance is weakest. Wales and Scotland did not wash their dirty laundry, however. They told us what was working and about some of their blockages and challenges, but we probably do not know everything about their systems. If we were to speak to the community and voluntary sector organisations that are involved with those systems, we might find that they have a very different view from the view that the people engaged in the planning system in Wales and Scotland presented to us. We therefore do not have all the facts. Statistically, it would be wrong of us to say to you, "This is where we would be in a league table", because we are unable to look at planning elsewhere from all angles.

Mr K Buchanan: One of you — I cannot remember whom — talked about applicants. Did you hear from applicants?

Ms Clifford: No.

Mr K Buchanan: How do you know about the problems that there are? You listened to England, Scotland and Wales and to the South of Ireland. You heard the perspectives of councils and the Housing Executive. I am going to roll two things into one. Applicants could be developers. The agriculture sector is the biggest sector in Northern Ireland. Did you hear from it?

Mr Jones: No.

Mr K Buchanan: No.

Mr Roberts: In part, the membership of the commission is to take account of that.

Mr K Buchanan: I was coming to that.

Mr Roberts: We would be involved with applicants from the community and voluntary sector and with individual applicants.

Mr K Buchanan: Of the people represented on the commission, who, would you say, is wearing the agriculture hat?

Mr Roberts: I would have thought that that would fall under Economy, so —.

Mr K Buchanan: Do you see those members wearing that hat? In your experience, was any member wearing an agriculture hat at any time?

Ms Hill: I will say again that we are in listening mode at the moment. We have not formed a recommendation, so it would be unfair to make any judgements on whether somebody is wearing the right hat.

Mr K Buchanan: It is strange that you have not heard from the biggest sector in Northern Ireland. It could be from the Ulster Farmers' Union (UFU) or whomever. I hear about the issues every day. You talk about consultees such as the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA) and the Shared Environmental Service (SES). Go, any one of you, and try to get approval for a planning application to build a poultry house or an animal house. Councils are allowing houses to be built beside farms within the 75-metre rule, yet farms cannot do an iota of development. Why is that? Councils are letting houses be built beside farms that have been there for hundreds of years, yet farms cannot develop because of odour assessments. They cannot win. It is beginning to look like a game of tennis between the NIEA and the SES. It is a massive issue, and I would be surprised if you have not heard about it. Have you not heard about the issue with the NIEA and the SES?

Ms Hill: No, we have not, but —.

Ms Clifford: It is not that we are unaware of it either, though, Keith. I work in the rural sector, but I do not represent the agriculture sector. I do not want to pretend that I do when I do not. It is part of our sphere of knowledge when sitting at tables, but I do not speak for the agriculture sector at all.

Mr K Buchanan: I am not telling you how to do your job, but, if you take anything away from this Committee meeting, it would be good between now and when you compile your report that you listen to the agriculture sector. You need to listen to developers and take on board what they say. Farmers can do nothing. Houses are being built around their farms. They cannot develop. They get involved in a game of tennis between the Northern Ireland Environmental Agency and the Shared Environmental Service and councils. The ball bounces back and forth between the SES and NIEA, and that goes on for years: literally years. We have talked about consultee responses, and they are, "Not sure" and, "We are not sure either". People are trying to build a business in the middle of hearing "Not sure".

Ms Hill: As Kate said, in each of our areas, we are aware of those issues. Those voices also fed into the Public Accounts Committee report and the Northern Ireland Audit Office (NIAO) reports. I am not making an excuse, but those themes and concerns came through in those reports as well, so it is not that they are not being listened to at all.

Mr K Buchanan: I will finish with this. It is all very well that you have spoken to people who are involved, but you also need to speak to the people who are submitting applications, whether that be a few businesses or a few individuals, to hear about their experiences. I appreciate that you can have resource issues at council level, but it is a game of tennis between the councils and the consultees and developers. That is also the case with Northern Ireland Water (NIW) issues. Applicants are sitting in the middle of all that, however, and they are so frustrated. Nobody is giving them an answer, because nobody is making the decision in order to give them an answer. I therefore advise you to listen to applicants, and certainly to the UFU and the wider agriculture sector. I hear every day about the issue with the NIEA and the SES. I am not blaming the two organisations, but farm businesses are being caught in the middle. As I said, houses are being built beside farms, and the farms cannot then develop. Why is that?

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Mark, do you want to come in?

Mr Durkan: I am fine, Chair, thanks. It has been a very informative evidence session. In response to Keith's points, I will say that, in many instances, planning committees make those approvals. It is therefore elected representatives who are approving the building of houses beside farms. I am just putting that out there.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Thank you. I have no one else on my list to ask questions.

I will return to an issue. What do you hope will come out of the overall process? What do you hope that the work that you have done to date will have achieved by the time that you report in May?

Mr Jones: We probably hope for a broader perspective to be taken to planning and for a pragmatic approach to be taken to what the planning system looks like from the outside. We want to able to look at the system as a whole, hear from all the organisations that work in it and draw out their views.

We had a brilliant session on the community engagement principles that are in the legislation, the requirements in that regard and development in some of those areas, which, hopefully, will start to cover off multiple areas of concern. That is the kind of thing that I would like to see. It is not necessarily about being issue-specific; it is about the principles, the drive and the incentives that are in the system to do good work. Those are some of the key things that the Committee can add value to, at a time when there has been, and continues to be, substantial change. The PIP programme is moving into another phase while we are having those discussions, there has been a change in Minister and there have been various other changes. If we can add value by focusing on a few key areas that affect the real world, we will have done a good job.

Ms Clifford: Keith has put out a challenge to us to listen to the sector. Are there other questions that you would like us to answer? What do you expect, or what would you like to see?

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): That is a key point. The question of who has been involved in the discussions has been raised a number of times today. Peter raised a point about the industry, and it is one that we hear that raised at the Committee. It is not unreasonable, when you are looking at the issues, for those people to want to be involved in the process. As Keith said, some sectors are really struggling. I talked about a particular piece of evidence in the Chamber this week that lays bare the scale of the problem with renewables and onshore wind. A report from RenewableNI states that it took, on average, 1,136 days for onshore wind projects to be granted planning permission in Northern Ireland between 2020 and 2023, compared to 217 days in England and 413 days in the Republic of Ireland. That is a problem.

We have talked today about how climate change targets are going to be met through planning. SSE warned in its written evidence that:

It is not for the Committee to tell you how to do your job, but we are here to understand the work that has been done. We hear about planning issues in Northern Ireland, so we are keen to see the final report. We hope that it makes a difference, that it is taken on board by the Minister, and that we see the changes that need to be made in the planning system.

Have the aims and objectives of the IRPC changed since the terms of reference were published? How realistic are they, given that the process is limited in scope and time now that you have to report back in May? Do you think that you will meet all of the original objectives and aims?

Mr Jones: That is something that we can assess in the final report. The commission wrote to the Minister about interactions with the development sector and the integration of voices from it and various other things. We are very aware of all those elements. We discussed that at the most recent meeting and made some notes about the development of group like ours in the future. We are certainly happy to look at —.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Are you confident that you are meeting those aims and objectives? You are due to report in, more or less, two months. Are you clear that your aims and objectives are being met now?

Ms Clifford: No is the answer to that. Not until we sit down and digest all that we have heard. At that point, we can assess how well we can answer each of the terms of reference. It would be disingenuous for us to sit here today and say, "Yes, we will absolutely meet all the aims and objectives". We will do our very best. It is our intention to fulfil the aims and objectives that we were asked to meet, but we may not be able to reach a consensus or a conclusion on some of those, because we either lack information or do not have time to digest all the bits. It would be utterly disingenuous for us to say that we will absolutely meet all those aims and objectives, but we will do our very best to do so.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): OK. Did you set May as the date for reporting?

Mr Roberts: Yes.

Ms Clifford: I think that it was set as part of the work programme.

Mr K Buchanan: Kate, I would like to come back on your question to us. I wrote down a few points. You heard me go on about the agriculture sector and the UFU. Developers, planning consultants and architects do this stuff day and daily, as you know. They live this stuff and can give you their experiences.

On the planning checklist, if you do an online passport application tonight, you know exactly what you have to do. You know that, if you do not fill in a bit of the application, you will get it back. Asking architects and the planning guys to go through the so-called planning checklist will not solve the issue, because, tomorrow, there will be another email to say, "We now need this". That goes on for years with planners. Fair enough, the rules may change, but it is like a game of tennis. There needs to be a list of the information that you have to provide, and if you do not provide that properly, the application should not be accepted. We are coming to that, but we cannot keep changing the rules every day. That goes on for years. Before you report back, I strongly advise that you talk to the planning consultants and architects and wear their shoes for a week. It is unbelievable. Those people ring us and say, "How can you help us get this through?", because it is an impossible system. You certainly need to listen to them before you put pen to paper. That is my advice. If you take anything away from this, let it be that. I am not speaking for the Committee, Chair; I am speaking personally.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Thank you, Keith. Lastly, on the back of my question, I want to check something. As a Committee, we take stock every so often by looking at the work that we have done to see whether we are meeting our strategic priorities. Is that something that you have done throughout the process? We have the list of people whom you have spoken to, but, at the end of meetings, do you look at the terms of reference and the aims and objectives to see whether you are meeting what you need to meet?

Mr Roberts: The work plan was very focused on that and on how we meet the aims and objectives. Chair, in answer to your question about whether we will meet them, if we were writing the report now, individually, we would probably all say, "Yes, we can meet the aims and objectives". However, it is a diverse group, so we need to get agreement around the table and agree the shared learning that we can put forward. That is why Kate said, "No, we can't say at this stage": we have not done the final deliberation. Keith has given us a bit more work, which is greatly appreciated, but that may extend the final deliberation.

Ms Hill: That is why we had the workshop. At that point, we felt that we were not delivering to our potential, so before the Minister was in place we held the workshop to help bring us back to the terms of reference.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): OK. Thank you for your time today. I would appreciate it if you could keep the Committee updated on when the report goes to the Minister, because that will help with our ability to take a look at it and with our engagement with the Minister on planning. Thank you very much for your time today. It is much appreciated.